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© St. Petersburg Times, published February 18, 2002
Feel free to browse...
www.ExtremeIroning.com/
Ironing is one of those things you don't generally classify under extreme. That would be like categorizing a round of milk and cookies as adventure and, conversely, one could take the opposite tack and suggest wrestling a bear to be cuddling. Details aside, the photos on this site should stir the innards of your funny bone. I especially enjoyed the bout of extreme ironing in London's Trafalgar Square. Having sat upon one of those lions (for about 20 seconds before being moved along by a less than thrilled police officer), I have to wonder how many social beverages were enjoyed before kicking up the courage to leap on the thing.
cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/02/06/solotrek.jetpack/
Comedian Steve Wright once suggested that if you had a helicopter and nowhere to park it you could leave it running and tie it to a tree. That thought sprang to mind as -- should Santa bring me one of these for the next holiday season -- I imagined trying to put one of these personal jetpacks down on my roof. There's no way She Who Must Be Obeyed would let the thing in the house lest it go off and get stuck in the ceiling fans. Now that jetpacks are almost here, all that's missing is usable video phones and we'll become the Jetsons.
www.Lssu.edu/banished/current/
I love word snobs. They can be hysterical with their highfalutin attitude toward those who use plain, simple language. Take this collection of the greatest hits of misused, overused and just useless words we heard in 2001. Words such as synergy made the list and redundancies such as "delay due to an earlier accident" (as opposed to an accident yet to happen). Fabulous.
www.Archive.org/movies/
The folks at Archive.org are not satisfied with just mirroring Web sites back to when the Web was young. They have their mitts on a great selection of film taken of culture, industry and life in 20th century North America. The people who maintain the Prelinger Archives have been generous indeed. And, armed with your favorite movie viewer, you can enjoy these short slices of modern Americana. DSL or cable modems are recommended because the files can be quite bulky.
pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020124.html
The technology world has a directive that states if you introduce a product that is 10 times as good as existing technology for less money, just about everybody will switch to your product. There haven't been too many of those moments, but the timing seems about right. If you can endure typing in this Web address, you'll read Robert X. Cringely's opinion on Ultra Wide Band, a digital radio implementation that changes everything we know about cell phones, TV and computer communications.